Concrete Logic Podcast: Building Knowledge and Pouring Wisdom, One Episode at a Time
Sept. 24, 2024

EP #099: The State of Concrete 3D Printing

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Concrete Logic Podcast

In this episode of the Concrete Logic Podcast, Seth interviews Jarett Gross, founder of Automate Construction, who discusses the evolution of construction automation and 3D printing. Jarett emphasizes the need to differentiate between different types of 3D printing technologies and materials, as they vary significantly. He believes that 3D printing has the potential to revolutionize construction. Still, he acknowledges that it will take time to overcome challenges such as high material costs and the integration of various construction processes.

Jarett also highlights the importance of data collection and analysis in improving automation and construction practices. He mentions that the United States is currently a hotspot for construction automation, but other countries like China and Europe have also made significant strides in the field.

Takeaways 

  • Different 3D printing technologies and materials types should be differentiated and not grouped.
  • 3D printing has the potential to revolutionize construction, but challenges such as high material costs and integration of various construction processes need to be addressed. 
  • Data collection and analysis are crucial for improving automation and construction practices. 
  • The United States, China, and Europe are leading the way in construction automation and 3D printing. 

Chapters
00:00 The Integration of Automation and Construction 
03:13 Understanding the Definition of 3D Printing in Construction 
08:38 Challenges and Costs of 3D Printed Construction 
18:05 The Potential for Automation to Revolutionize the Construction Industry 
21:15 The Global Landscape of Construction Automation

***
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Episode References
Guest: Jarett Gross | Automate Construction | jarett@3dprinted.construction
Guest Website:⁠ https://automateconstruction.com/ 

Producers: Jodi Tandett
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Host: Seth Tandett, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠seth@concretelogicpodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Host LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/seth-tandett/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.concretelogicpodcast.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/concrete-logic-podcast

Transcript

Seth (00:02.052)
And welcome to another episode of the Concrete Logic Podcast. And today I have Jarett Gross. He's from the Automate Construction. really, to me personally, Jarett is, he's kind of on the forefront of integrating automation and construction.

Jarett Gross (00:08.886)
Gross. Jarett Gross.

Jarett Gross (00:13.208)
the grossest.

Seth (00:30.736)
And when I want to see what's going on with 3D printing, always check on what Jarett's up to. So I'm happy to have him on the show today.

Jarett Gross (00:41.976)
Thanks so much for having me, Seth. Integrating is really strong word. mostly try just to film what other people are integrating. But I do get the opportunity to see incredible projects demonstrating the evolution of construction around the world, mostly in the States over the past year, probably the next year too. think the US has a hotspot for construction automation and startup funding at the moment. But I'm really trying to create a

Seth (00:48.903)
Yeah.

Jarett Gross (01:08.694)
historical library of the evolution of construction from where it started with two by fours to where it's going with robots, maybe one day humanoid robots, maybe one day some even bigger robots built by the humanoid robots. So I don't know if I'll be alive to see the end of that transition where you press a button and build a whole home, but we're seeing it unfold in front of us. And I'm trying to, my goal is to track that I'm not the integrator, just the camera guy.

Seth (01:34.864)
Yeah, he he I would call you a journalist. Is that fair to say? Yeah. So, yeah, so we're going to talk about that today. And just to remind folks how the podcast works, if you could, if you if you really enjoyed the conversation today with Jarett, please share this, share the podcast with a colleague, co -worker, somebody in the industry.

Jarett Gross (01:37.42)
Thanks. Yeah, I appreciate that.

Seth (02:00.868)
And then the other things you could do is if you go to the concrete logic podcast dot com home page, there's a couple of ways you can get ahold of me. There's a contact button. You click on that and you can send me an email or there's a there's a microphone in the bottom right hand side of the of the home page as well. And that you click on that and you can leave me a voicemail. And what we're looking for there is topic suggestions or guest suggestions.

So reach out and let me know what you want to hear on the podcast. And then the last way, as always, there's the on the same homepage on ConcreteLogicPodcast .com, there's a donation page. So you click on that and you can donate any amount. We don't have, you know, pay walls or anything like that. We just put our put out these podcasts and

look for you guys to give us some kind of value back if you got some value out of the podcast. So that's how, how the podcast works. So Jarett, after I butchered your name and your introduction, let's get, let's get into it. so, so Jarett, if you could, I guess, could you give us your definition of it? This might sound silly to you, but what, what is 3d printing in your view and your eyes?

Jarett Gross (03:22.424)
very important place to start, think. And, you know, I would even deconstruct the question as far as

3D printing is applied to all these different technologies and it's really a misnomer because they're all so different from each other. So trying to group them all into one category, even things that are 3D printed, obviously coming out of an extruder head, wet material that becomes solid, that may look the same, but one may be an endothermic reaction, whereas the other is an exothermic reaction. That's a key distinction between plastic, concrete, geopolymers would be on this side.

Any kind of bio -based PLA, ABS, anything you would heat up, it requires heat to melt the thing you're printing and then deposit it and then it cools out, it cools off. As opposed to the concrete, it's a chemical reaction releasing heat from the mixture of the water and the cement. So it's really foolish, I think, to compare both in the same category in any way. And you see some groups doing permitting

American standards organizations, lumping them both together, which is horrible in my opinion, because the tensile strength of concrete, I'm sure you know is one tenth of the compressive strength, as opposed to, if you look at plastic, the compressive strength and the tensile strength may be more even. And so why would you force the limitations of concrete onto plastic and vice versa, just two completely different materials?

And then you have other groups like Fastbrick Robotics who want to be included in 3D printing. And now if you rewind to 1940, you have William E. Urschel, who was the first to deposit concrete in a circle. He built a robot that goes around. I did a voiceover of the whole video, it on my YouTube channel, and it's explaining how it's not quite 3D printing because it doesn't have a digital file. So he designed a robot that went around in a circle, but it doesn't have

Jarett Gross (05:28.396)
a tool path that you can adjust or change beyond the radius of the circle. The modern 3D printers, you can make any custom shape, square, octagon, custom walls, parametric design, but many will argue without the digital design aspect, it's not quite 3D printing. So I would say I just tried to present all the different perspectives of different people I've heard to you at once so you can pick your favorite and go with it.

Seth (05:52.84)
Yeah, no, I remember that video and I think I reached out to you and asked you if that was authentic or not. I got to check out your video on YouTube of you of you commentating on that. I didn't realize you.

Jarett Gross (06:09.176)
Or you can find their original on the Urschel. Urschel is a kitchenware products company now they do engineering and they make like kitchen automations, chopping, slicing, blending and stuff. So the YouTube channel has this old video, 10 years old of the 1940 footage, black and white and then colorized of William E. Urschel printing the buildings. Apparently they're in some state, I forget where one is in like dilapidated shape. The other one has a warehouse built on top of it.

Seth (06:28.049)
Right?

Jarett Gross (06:37.9)
I was talking to the grandson of the guy who was gonna try to put me in touch with the owner, but it didn't quite work out, maybe someday.

Seth (06:44.38)
I gotcha. All right. So yeah, there's a, you, you, you, you unloaded a lot of us, a lot of stuff on that. Hey, yeah. 3d printing. What is 3d? Yeah.

Jarett Gross (06:51.276)
What's 3D printing? It starts with a digital toolpath that can be customized and then deposited into some print volume into the exact replica of the digital file in a way that you can change the digital file and create a new object, a one -off without the need for form work. Sometimes people use print support, sometimes people print in

Seth (07:07.592)
Okay.

Jarett Gross (07:17.954)
powder beds, so there's all kinds of different print volumes or print mediums that you can print, metal, wood, polymer combinations, chocolate, people print all kinds of things. I do think it's important to then split it up into different categories, endothermic, exothermic to start off with. One takes heat to happen, the other releases heat, and...

Seth (07:30.918)
you

Jarett Gross (07:47.83)
Yeah, I guess that's where I think the lines are, but people are going to disagree with that for sure.

Seth (07:55.536)
Yeah. And we were talking a little bit offline about a particular company that I kind of admire. I think we may, with your definition of 3D printing, it sounds like you're more into what's going on, I guess, what we would call at the site, right? So to you, 3D printing would be at the site, not necessarily 3D. Yeah.

Jarett Gross (08:18.584)
To me, 3D printing is an arbitrary term. So I'm not interested in, like, I think it's abused and people like mess up the categories too much. So that's why my brand is Automate Construction, because it's really about what's taking a significant portion of the human labor going in on the construction site and replacing that human labor, not the management, not taking pictures of stuff, but the actual placing pieces of the house that are going to be there for 100 years, or whatever building it is or whatever structure it is.

Seth (08:44.059)
Right.

Jarett Gross (08:47.574)
And so yeah, Pike certainly fits that category.

Seth (08:50.0)
Yeah, but they're printing off at a facility prefabbing and then bringing it to the site, which you could argue that does that does reduce labor that's going on at the site. But, well, labor overall. Right. But they're still.

Jarett Gross (08:54.786)
That's true.

Jarett Gross (08:58.786)
on the next.

Seth (09:10.31)
Yeah.

Jarett Gross (09:11.032)
Like all iron products, pretty much all steel or iron is going to be manufactured offsite and then delivered on site. So it's a, just a solution. And the problem with that, the reason I don't cover a lot of offsite it is because they bring it on site, assemble it and say, look, it only took 10 hours on site. That's automation. But you go to their factory, they got a bunch of guys with hammers and they're doing, they have no computers, no robots. They don't even have iPhones. They got flip phones and they're all wearing jeans and boots and working as

Seth (09:16.678)
Yeah.

Jarett Gross (09:40.428)
Hardest they can, which is great, but it's not automation. So it's like shifting the labor from onsite to offsite. A lot of people call that automation, but there are a few companies. PICUS is a great example, using robots offsite, shipping them onsite. Another one is Botville. They're using, they're doing framing with two by fours and they have the robots adjusting the two by fours to straight them out, tack them, screw them in, cut them too. They got saws. It's really an impressive operation, but

all kinds of constrict like that's not 3D printing at all. Then you have Boxable as well with their unfolding houses with they're trying to increase the manufacturing supply chain or the manufacturing automation all the time. They started off with a $3 million Porsche contract to design their manufacturing line and that got them to like one house a week and then they tripled capacity and now they're I think close to 600 or 700 units.

Seth (10:33.66)
Yeah. Yeah. You made, you made me smile when you, you were, you were saying that, Hey, this is kind of my beef with, precast concrete is that they say they save them a bunch of time and you hit it on the, on the head. There is, they're doing some work prior to that, right? They're fabbing, but prior to that, then bringing it to the site. so I, those, those posts that I see where they're like, we erected this building in.

in two months and like, no, you didn't. You forgot about the 10 months of prefabrication that you did prior to that. But anyways, that's a little dig to my precast friends out there. You know, I know you're listening.

Jarett Gross (11:17.144)
while we're making digs, the problem with printing is they'll say how long it took to print the house. They'll say it took two weeks, three weeks to print the house or 24 hours to print the house. But they're only measuring the active print time where the printer is moving. And even if you're working on a plastic print, there's a lot more time that goes into it, preparing it, downloading the file, prepping the file, planning the file. In construction, it's 10 times more than that because you have all the permitting to get through and the printing is only the walls of the house. I mean, the biggest

Seth (11:22.066)
Yeah.

Jarett Gross (11:45.912)
issue with 3D printed construction. If you want to clip this section and use it as the problem with 3D printed construction is that the material has way more concrete than traditional concrete. So a regular house might have 15 % concrete or 20 % concrete. Most 3D printed houses have upwards of 30 or 40 % cement in their concrete. So if you have so much cement in the concrete, it's going to be more expensive than a mix that has much less cement. And then they also use additives like

fly ash and slag, which used to be really cheap, but now they're getting bought up by the big concrete companies and they're becoming expensive because of the BS carbon accounting. Apparently the coal and iron byproducts are zero carbon emissions. I don't know how that works, but the, the, the printing is only handling the walls, which is eight to 12 % of the construction process, the framing itself, not including the insulation, not including the roof, not including the floors, not including all that other stuff.

Seth (12:23.922)
Mm

Jarett Gross (12:43.929)
When you look at the completed costs, nobody's sharing how much it costs to 3D print a house publicly, but in private, general contractors will share numbers with me of projects they've seen for things like Habitat for Humanity and other nonprofit groups that aren't influenced. They're not a startup that's raising equity based on the low price they're building houses. And they say that it's about 40 % more expensive than traditional construction. And it's good to give a percentage because construction costs vary so differently region to region. One place might have cheap roofing, one place might have cheap flooring.

But if you just give an overall average for the things that will apply to a 3D printed house the same way they'll apply to a regular house, you get kind of a good estimate. When you consider that something that should only be 8 to 12 % of the cost to begin with, the framing, ends up being a house that costs 40 % more, the math on that is a 4 or 5x in cost of the category. And it's not all in that category. So if you look at the cost to print the walls,

It might even look like it's on par, but the costs are increased in other places. Your walls are going to be heavier, so you'll need a thicker foundation. Your walls are going to have a really thick bead of concrete with supports in between, so you can't use solid fill insulation. You need to use some kind of loose fill or spray foam insulation. That's adding cost, too. Your framing still needs to be done in between your windows because the walls are ripped. You need a flat surface to mount your windows, your doors. Your roof still needs to be mounted and

all your subcontractors, unless you have great relationships with them, are going to be throwing change orders at you because they've never seen it before.

Seth (14:21.961)
Yeah, I always, when, this thing was really, you know, the few years back and, know, we had labor shortages and material shortages and there was a, you know, the concern is still there for a little bit, not as bad as it was. and then as the concern about affordable housing and I was like, I never saw like,

3D printing as solving those problems. Maybe, can you speak to that? Maybe, I guess the question to me is, are we using that technology for the right problem? Is there a better problem that it could solve?

Jarett Gross (15:10.594)
think a lot of people are finding smaller solutions along the way, which is great for them. There's all kinds of products that can be produced, civil engineering construction projects and just flower pots and smaller things like that, statues and whatever parametric designs people want that are just totally one of a kind where you're not going to see it anywhere else. Nobody's going to have the same thing. It's just not my primary concentration.

Seth (15:14.694)
-huh.

Jarett Gross (15:38.296)
I want to see commercial buildings and residential buildings. And I want to see it done with automation and 3D printing. mean, I'm very hopeful for it. So I have pretty much dedicated my whole career to construction automation and 3D printed construction is at least 80 or 90 % of the videos I've done. And that's because it's tackling the biggest portion of the construction process compared to when I look at other

automation technologies that are drawing lines on the ground or some drone flying over. They're not even replacing any real labor. You don't have, they're adding info for management, but construction's had a declining productivity per person for years. So every other industry productivity per person is skyrocketing. There's going to be something that does it. 3D printing has immense potential if you can get the material costs down. If you can

be on par with traditional concrete, a few more decades of labor costs rising and it's almost no doubt it'll be more cost effective eventually.

Seth (16:46.214)
Yeah, I was, yeah, no, I, I, understand you gotta take steps and things like that, but I was like, we had, was looking at real quick. we had advanced construction robotics on a podcast before and how they were, they were tackling the, laying out rebar, right? And that's it. What's that?

Jarett Gross (17:00.151)
Nice.

Jarett Gross (17:05.346)
They said they're not ready for mine yet. They told me they're not ready to do mine yet.

Seth (17:09.792)
no, are. I would think they are. seen your, think, I don't know. Anyway, so we had, we, we,

Jarett Gross (17:16.28)
person. It's not because they're not like, they just don't want to share it with their I'm sure they will soon.

Seth (17:22.374)
Yeah. And there might be things that you would ask that I didn't ask. But anyways, you know, tackling things that jobs that are dangerous was kind of the thing that popped in my head. That would be great for automation to solve. Cause there's, there's a, there's a premium on doing that type of work. So to me, that's, I think that's what I was getting at. Jarett, I was just doing a bad job of asking you is when I got really frustrated is, is they went after.

what I think is the simplest thing to build on the home is the walls, right? And I was like, that's, that's not going to get us anywhere. You're never going to beat the, they, they can't build the houses cheap or fast enough or cheap enough. so I always thought that was just a waste of effort and, and resources to chase that versus, yeah.

Jarett Gross (18:15.084)
I think you just got to start somewhere because once you the robot on site, you got cameras on site, you're collecting data and that's all going to help you so much long -term because you'll plug that all into TensorFlow, have AI analyze the whole thing and just having that data even from stuff you did wrong is going to be what teaches you how to do it right. It's going to cost a lot of money and a lot of investors are going to lose and a few are going to win big.

Seth (18:33.148)
Yeah, fair enough.

Seth (18:40.124)
Yeah. So do you think that we're going down the right path as far as focusing on the homes like we are?

Jarett Gross (18:49.624)
Full steam ahead, as many investor dollars can be raised towards construction automation and spent on throwing spaghetti at the wall, trying stuff that nobody's tried before, figuring out how to rethink huge trunks of the process at once, not just screwing in this nail or replacing this piece of how the process used to work. The process should be rethought from the ground up if it's going to be fully automated to like the nth degree.

Seth (19:17.724)
Right. And do you, is that what you think is that's the direction we're going? Is it just going to be automated?

Jarett Gross (19:25.4)
Yeah, no, just just a matter of how long it takes like it in a thousand years for sure. If humans are still around, we'll have that in my lifetime. I don't know in five years. Certainly not in 10 years. Certainly not 20 years. I would say almost certainly not. But if it happens, I don't know what I'll make videos after that. So it takes a while.

Seth (19:45.704)
Right.

Do you, and, do you see the United States is leading the way or do you see another country that's making, bigger strides?

Jarett Gross (19:56.824)
My very first videos were in China. was, visited Winsun 3D who had invested $300 million in 2019. I bought a camera in Hong Kong and filmed my first couple of YouTube videos. charged me 30 bucks to film like the facility. Some guy gave me a tour. Everybody in charge wasn't there that day. So I just kind of had like free rein to the facility and got to see like they had a ton of buildings, dozens of them. One big commercial building, four stories under construction, and then one five story apartment building that was prefabricated. It's like,

Some of the biggest projects I've seen and like the biggest facility of the most prints I've seen still to this day. And then Europe was a huge innovator in especially the Netherlands like TU, Eindhoven and Dresden and a bunch of other universities in Europe. Academically, I guess Europe was an innovator and also some of the European printer manufacturers have sold more printers in more countries than

anywhere else in world, America is very concentrated on America. yeah, I wouldn't say that America is the only player or even like, by far the most dominant. I think right now in 2024, they're the most instruction automation activities happening in the States. pre 2019, I would say it was happening mostly in China, and then it was Europe until 2022. And then since 2022,

the USA has been a hotspot for construction automation. And you even see companies like FastBrip Robotics, who was a public company on the Australian Stock Exchange moved to Florida. So now they're headquartered in America, they'll be selling printers in America. And hopefully I'll head down there.

Seth (21:42.92)
Cool. And do you think the U S has become in the center piece of, of automation just because of the there's money.

Jarett Gross (21:53.462)
Yeah. What do you think?

Seth (21:56.296)
I was, yeah, it just, well, we print money, like it's nobody's business. So, yeah, no, they seemed to, I mean, I was, what was the group that was, that was, building the barracks down in Texas icon. Okay. Cause they were, they would get a bunch of government money to do that. Right.

Jarett Gross (22:12.469)
I got it.

Jarett Gross (22:18.616)
Yeah, I believe they did. They did deals with NASA. They did deals with the military. They did all kinds of government stuff. I'm wondering, because you have much more construction tenure than me, I've less than one decade. You got two at least. So have you seen other technologies that, let's say 20 years ago were emerging and stuff that people were really excited about, like this might change the game. And then either it got integrated and people, it's just so common. It's not interesting or it didn't get integrated and everybody, was like a big nothing burger.

Seth (22:48.712)
I would say, the, two things pop into my, my head when you say things like that. So the first thing is concrete pumping. think that's made a lot of strides in the last two to three decades. I mean, that wasn't common commonplace say 40 years ago. And we sure the heck didn't know what we were doing back then. And now I think people are appreciating what it takes to pump concrete in,

Jarett Gross (23:03.655)
Cool.

Seth (23:19.067)
I've had conversations lately with folks that are, there's admixtures, additives that you can add to concrete pumping so that performs even better. we can do even, I mean, I've been on a job that we pumped concrete through 600 foot of hose, which I didn't even think was possible when.

I was on the project. was like, what? We're going to do what? So yeah, I think that that's made big strides. And then I would say the machines that we're using right now, laser screeds and things like that for floor flatness that taken the place of some finishers and things like that. think that took some while for folks to invest in it.

Jarett Gross (24:14.968)
How does the laser screw work? I don't know about that.

Seth (24:17.34)
So you set up like a laser on a tripod nearby. you set up, it's like setting up, I'm sure the 3D printers do this. So you set up like a control point. How does 3D printing work as far as that?

Jarett Gross (24:38.658)
Some of them do. Icon's new Phoenix printer and the Fassbrick Robotics systems have a boom where it's laser leveled so that it can adjust for the boom sway and remembers position. Some printers just are so sturdy. They have like two ton blocks that are going to anchored. They just trust it's not going to move. So once they have it calibrated, they assume that it's just going to stay in position, which gets them messed up sometimes. Sometimes the rain will come, wash the sand under the anchor. One anchor goes off by one degree and everything's twisted.

Seth (24:49.185)
-huh.

Seth (25:08.48)
yeah, that sounds so yeah, it's kind of the same thing is the, know, you set up a laser and in the machine that you actually use to screed the concrete is in constant communication with whatever elevation that's at. So it knows what elevation to do and they can do really cool things like not just do flat, do control the machine. So it does like 3D

Jarett Gross (25:38.072)
drains.

Seth (25:38.913)
Yeah, things like that. Yeah, it's really really cool. What's that?

Jarett Gross (25:42.392)
How can they get like within a millimeter or how flat does it get?

Seth (25:48.872)
that's a great question. we, we, you know, we fall ACI ACI as, you know, different degrees of what we call floor flatness and floor levelness. so the ones that are, you go from like a typical, building is, you know, what we would call a 25 floor flatness, 35 floor levelness all the way up to, you can get up to a hundred. And those are like the super flats.

So typically that's when you see folks using those machines and to be honest, I'm not well versed in how Flat those things can go but that's when you really see the the guys that are That specialize in those super flat floors. So that's when you see those you just can't do it without it So and then

Jarett Gross (26:43.192)
3D print houses look a lot nicer with a very flat floor. They can compensate for an uneven layer by just doing a really thick first layer because the printer will be perfectly flat. So it'll just extrude extra and stay while the floor distance is moving. It'll just fill in extra concrete, but it looks kind of ugly. So if the floor is perfectly even, especially like your friends at Pike is get really clean, even layer lines. If you have one error in a hundred perfect layers, it sticks out like a sore thumb. But if you have, if every layer has imperfections,

It's like, it just looks like a 3D printed wall. So like, I don't know, there's a big difference between like, it's like the level three versus the level five drywall finish.

Seth (27:22.33)
Yeah. Yeah. And usually residential guys aren't really concerned about flat floors. the guys that do those, they're just trying to bang it out. yeah. So I would say the pumping in the, in the laser screen are the two like latest technologies, I think other than, you know, there's yeah, that, that is yeah, exactly. Well, are used across the board.

Jarett Gross (27:42.968)
relevant to the levels.

Seth (27:51.176)
There's other technologies out there, chemicals and things like that, that people are starting to use and things like that, but those aren't widely adopted.

Jarett Gross (28:03.074)
What about a fail one that didn't work out as well as people were hoping it would?

Seth (28:07.528)
Huh.

Jarett Gross (28:09.624)
It's hard to remember, out of sight, out of mind.

Seth (28:11.622)
Yeah, no, I had nothing pops into my head. mean, you know, you've been, you know, working on this for a while now and you've watched us from the outside. We're slow adopters. So everyone's

Jarett Gross (28:23.798)
not that long. For reference, the Katara collapse happened right before I got interested in construction automation. So I don't know if that feels recent or a long time ago to you. But Katara was like the big construction automation company before I was doing any kind of journalism. They had raised so much money and you know them, right?

Seth (28:43.961)
Yeah, they were, so they were the guys that were, they like did it all right. They did the design, the engineering and built it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there was some, there was some other, I was trying to remember that.

Jarett Gross (28:53.826)
glass, steel, timber, they wanted to do it.

Jarett Gross (29:06.712)
So I haven't really seen anything go bust yet.

Seth (29:10.843)
as far as.

Jarett Gross (29:12.152)
Like I haven't seen any companies go under that Katara was the big construction automation company that went under. I haven't seen any, yeah. I haven't seen any firms raise a bunch of money to construction. You have some firms like diamond age who raised a bunch of money for 3d concrete printing built 20 something homes on site. And then they, I guess something happened where the C suite moved out, got replaced.

And seems like they're doing off -site prefab now instead of on -site printers. So that's a retooling or pivot not quite a Like what happened to Katara, but

Seth (29:49.116)
Yeah. Yeah. I viewed that as an out kind of like an outsider trying to get in and didn't have the, like, I think the companies I respect that are doing this automation is that they've got some, some folks in there that have been in the industry, for decades, you know, and then they can be, be like, you know, you know, try to balance it out a little bit. Again, it's great to have people really interested in construction.

to a point that they want to bring in these new technologies and get us thinking in different ways. But I think you got to have someone in there that's been in there for a while and say, you know, maybe this is not the direction to go and make sure we're tackling the right challenges, I guess, is kind of like. So when I see people like feel like that, I'm like, yeah, that was an outsider.

Jarett Gross (30:45.186)
Yeah, every team should have somebody with at least one or two decades of experience.

Seth (30:49.32)
Yeah, exactly. Well, cool, man. Well, that 30 minutes went quick. I told you it would. Is there anything else that you want to hit on before we go? I definitely want to help people to check out your is your YouTube channel automate construction?

Jarett Gross (31:08.32)
think it is, my name is Jarrett Gross and the title of the YouTube channel is Jarrett Gross, but I think I put it in as at Automate Construction and then there's the Automate Construction podcast and every platform wherever you're following people is at Automate Construction pretty much, so you can find me there. I don't know if this is a, the one thing I would want to plug, if you can include this, is that if people want to get involved in the 3D printed construction industry, I started a website, humanrobotarmy.com, where they can submit their resume and I'll connect them with a 3D printed construction company.

in either America, we have a couple of companies in the Middle East, one in Europe. So people are interested in specifically 3D printed construction, mostly like hard work and labor roles on site. Guys like you said, with 10 years experience, 20 years experience, or people with, who are just getting started. A lot of the companies want those, pardon people, like you want to have a combination of both because people are learning totally new skills. And if you have all people who are set in their ways, you get kind of, it's hard to innovate.

You want like one leader who knows all the details of how things used to be and then a bunch of young hungry guppies who are gonna fuck everything up and kind of make a mess that somebody can clean up who's responsible.

Seth (32:18.61)
There you go. Perfect. Yeah, no, definitely. I'll put that link in the show notes. I was checking out your website this morning. saw that. Well, Jarett, thank you for coming on the show. I'm glad we finally got to speak. And folks, until next time, let's keep it concrete.

Jarett Gross (32:37.142)
Yes, please.

Jarett Gross (32:42.636)
Awesome.

Jarett Gross Profile Photo

Jarett Gross

Journalist

Jarett Gross is a pioneering journalist and the creative force behind Automate Construction, a platform dedicated to exploring the future of automated construction technologies. With a keen eye for innovation and a passion for sustainable building practices, Jarret has become a leading voice in the industry.

Through his work with Automate Construction, Jarett delves into the latest advancements in construction automation, including 3D printing, robotics, and AI-driven solutions. His insightful reporting and engaging content have made him a trusted source of information for professionals and enthusiasts alike.

Jarett’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in construction has earned him recognition and respect within the industry. He continues to inspire and educate his audience, driving the conversation forward on how technology can revolutionize the way we build.